Seeing as Google is a software company, it's weird to expect anything else from them. That said, self driving cars are hardware, as are their phones. Plus their robotics division is focused on applying AI to robots, so really you are talking about software.

Let us know about any new project from google software or otherwise. It’s a dead end.

Nobody denies a google car division. What we are saying is that google will never see an actual product. Wasted young minds into efforts that nobody will ever see. It’s been happening for 10 years now.

I work at Amazon. One of the worst jobs in the building is destinations. Every single box that comes in the door gets scanned by hand and a 2 letter code written on it with a crayon. Why they haven't figured out how to automate that just boggles my mind.

but it comes back in different ways. Faster AWS, faster shipping, better robots.

I think people underestimate how important it is to get more R&D money flowing into robotics. More dollars, more people drawn into the field, more innovation, etc. Those advances in robotics, computer vision, etc can show up later used in vertical farming, manufacturing, construction, etc.

an irrational hatred of Amazon

I wouldn't even limit it to Amazon. Reddit can't seem to decide whether we're owed jobs or that all jobs are slavery.

I’m more concerned how these people who rely on casual work are going to pay their bills than whether they can afford to shop there, Hopefully the greater the automation, and resulting lower numbers of employees, the less concerned governments will be about hammering them for higher rates of taxation.

and how does that help the casual worker? your government will have more money but you won't - the better answer is to make sure you have skills to do something better, why should humans do things that machines can do, we aren't supposed to be robots

Repair the machines, program them. Not just Amazon either, robotics and programming are IT in general are huge. Then you have researchers, scientists, and plenty of other jobs that will require people for a long while.